Thompson Says Expanded Gun Background Checks to Become Law

By Heidi Przybyla -
Mar 13, 2013

Representative Mike Thompson
predicted legislation to expand background checks for firearms
purchases will pass both chambers of the U.S. Congress, and
urged “responsible gun owners” to speak out in support.

Thompson, a California Democrat leading a U.S. House panel
on gun violence, told reporters today at a Bloomberg Government
breakfast that failure to pass such legislation in the next few
weeks would ignore the will of a majority of Americans who
support universal background checks.

“I just can’t see how Congress could not respond to this
when so many of the American people want a background-check
bill,” said Thompson, a longtime hunter and gun owner.
“Criminals and dangerously mentally ill individuals should not
have access to guns, you can’t get there without having some
sort of background check.”

Broadening the current system of background checks to
private sales at gun shows and between non-family members is
part of the package of proposals President Barack Obama offered
to curb gun violence after the Dec. 14 shootings of 20 children
and six school employees at an elementary school in Newtown,
Connecticut. Obama’s call for banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines has strong opposition in the Republican-majority House and the Democratic-led Senate.

Partisan Divide

The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday approved on a
party-line vote a measure to expand the background-check system
created by the 1993 Brady Law. It would also require states to
provide more criminal and mental health records to the national
database for instant background checks.

The measure is opposed by the National Rifle Association,
the nation’s biggest gun lobby that claims 4 million members,
and by a number of Republicans in the Senate and House.

A Quinnipiac University poll conducted Feb. 27 to March 4
found that 88 percent of respondents, including 83 percent of
Republicans, favor background checks for all gun buyers.

Republicans who oppose an expanded background-check law say
that while it could prevent criminals from legally purchasing
guns, the government’s focus should be on enforcing current
laws. The background-check bill won’t be effective in curbing
gun violence because criminals won’t submit to them, said Iowa
Senator Charles Grassley, the Judiciary panel’s top Republican.

“Criminals do not comply with existing background-check
laws,” Grassley said yesterday. “We should make sure existing
laws are effective and enforced before we start enacting new
ones.”

Registry Concerns

Some Republicans have expressed concern about a requirement
that licensed gun dealers keep a record of their sales for 20
years to help law enforcement track firearms found at crime
scenes. That rule, they say, may lead to a national gun registry
that the federal government could ultimately use to confiscate
guns.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, whose committee
oversees gun legislation, has said he opposes universal
background checks and doesn’t plan to take up the issue.

Thompson said he doesn’t think Goodlatte’s plan to avoid a
background-check debate “will come to fruition.”

A requirement for licensed dealers to maintain records of
background checks has been in place for 40 years, and advocates
are trying to broaden the law to end exceptions for private
sales at gun shows and between non-family members, Thompson
said.

No Confiscation

“There’s been no gun confiscation as a result of it,” he
said, and current federal law “says you can’t have a federal
registry.”

NRA President David Keene has said an expansion of the law
would be an onerous burden on rural gun owners who would have to
travel long distances to find licensed dealers to perform a
screening.

A new study by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors
Against Illegal Guns found that 98.4 percent of Americans live
within 10 miles of a gun dealer. There are 58,344 federally
licensed gun dealers in the U.S., nearly twice the number of
post offices. Bloomberg is founder and majority owner of
Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

Thompson said as many as 50 to 80 House Republicans “when
push comes to shove, would vote for a background-check bill” if
the legislation advanced.

Stopped Purchases

In a statement yesterday, Dan Gross, president of the Brady
Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the 1993 background check
law has stopped more than 2 million criminals, domestic abusers
and other prohibited purchasers from buying guns. Gross added
that 40 percent of gun purchases aren’t subject to background
checks because of exceptions for sales at gun shows, over the
Internet, through classified ads and at flea markets.

Thompson said he has been disappointed by the NRA’s
opposition to background checks.

He called on law-abiding gun owners to play a greater role
in enacting tougher laws to protect their rights.

If most Americans who don’t own guns “think everybody
who’s a gun owner, everybody who’s a hunter, is running around
with 30-shot magazine and military-type of assault weapons, I
think it’s going to lead to the demise of responsible sportsmen
and women being able to have access to firearms and the ability
to use them,” Thompson said.